For the MOC on CP

Prompt: "You make me want to live, [Rowan]. Not survive; not exist. Live." -Aelin Ashryver Galathynius in Queen of Shadows.

It became an annual observation, a sort of religious ceremony. The old Jewish man who lived next door fasted on Rosh Hashanah; the Muslim made his devout pilgrimage to Mecca, and I returned to Devon School each year—as unannounced as possible—to make mine to that goddamn tree.

I remember waking from a dream once to what I thought was the sound of his voice. Only when I did open my eyes it was too dark and too cold, and Phineas's face was too close. He wasn't saying "time to run, Gene" —he was just crouching silently beside my head—which made me really believe I was still asleep. And so, in that uncontrollable half-state you are in when you're dreaming, I reached up to him and brought his face down to mind, half expecting a fox or a rabbit to jump out from his pupils and shriek "you are late for supper!" and then take me sailing in the blue-green tides of his irises, marked with the saltwater of his tears.

But neither of those things happened, and dream-Phineas cleared his throat and said, "I was just going to say—maybe we should take the morning off." He paused. "It's cold. The cold, it's making my leg ache."

I thought, then, that I had to wake up, so I said to him, "It's warm under here," and I lifted my covers. After a brief hesitation, he crawled into the bed, wrapped his arms around my torso, and sank his nose into the crook of my neck.

"Go back to sleep," he murmured groggily.

I didn't; I simply lay unmoving, feeling his chest fall and rise into my side and his breaths whistle past my ear. And I never did wake up, either.

\\.\

I talked to him after he died. Death is really such an imaginary concept, Finny, I told him. I'm alive, but I can't breathe and I don't feel the need to anymore. You're dead, but you're still very alive.

"That's ridiculous, Gene," he said. "I'm dead, and so I'm dead. And you should get along with your life."

But don't you see? I nearly screamed. I was only me when you existed. I lived for you, with you, as you. It should work the other way around—you should live vicariously on in me—but you don't. You are dead, and I am dead.

"Go to sleep," he said. "And stop talking to me inside your head."

I am dreaming, I said to the emptiness.

You wish you were, it echoed back.

\\.\

I saw him in the streets in the sleek November rain, inching across a balcony three stories high to procure an umbrella that had been blown up by the wind and snagged in the iron railing.

"You all right?" I called up to him, and he grinned down carelessly, and it was almost as if I was staring into the eyes of a skeleton.

Lightning flashed, and I could do nothing but watch as Phineas fell—again—and drifted to the rain-slicked cobblestones in a crumpled heap of singed skin and shattered bones. I ran to his side and collapsed, and I was rocking back and forth, holding the small, charred boy closely when I realized that his face was scratched and bloody and that he wasn't Phineas.

The blue lights came and took him away, and I was asked by countless uniform faces if I was his father, to which I replied "I thought I was."

Then I sat down on a bench beside a lamppost under the needling rain that persisted and came down harder and harder until it was a barrage of bullets shot with startling accuracy straight into my heart. I waited and waited and waited, waited to wake up with a start, to suddenly sit bolt upright in bed, gasping the water out of my lungs, and reach a hand out to touch the sharp bones of Phineas's ribcage and, after a few moments, feel his arms placed deliberately around me. I waited until I was drenched from rain and soaked by tears—

But the dream never ended.

\\.

I went this time in the afternoon, when That Goddamn Tree was suspended in a shaft of golden sunlight and I could feel Phineas in the air and in the sounds of the tepid river. Both of us were here for once—and not just in memory—and yet neither of us really was. Phineas's grave was fifty miles away, at his home, in Boston. I would have gone there if I could have felt his presence, but the one time I visited there was only silence and death, of his and mine.

I took off my clothes and climbed the goddamn tree, thinking that jumping into the glassy water would make everything all right or at least tolerable again. But as I stood precariously on the sagging branch, hanging over the river like a blind trapeze artist over his net, I found that I couldn't throw myself off. It was all too predictable—I would fall, break the surface, sink, squint at the bubbles and greenish underwater mud, rise to the top, and pick my way toward the bank—Phineas wasn't here. It was all too predictable.

I climbed down again. A sudden gust of wind tore down from the treetops and howled at me, chafing at my bare skin. I shivered, and suddenly the afternoon didn't seem so golden anymore. It sneered at me and bared its teeth. "You fixed it," it said in Brinker Hadley's voice. "You knew all the time. I'll bet it was all your doing." And then, an unfamiliar voice: "So, you killed him, did you?" Then Brinker again: "We know the scene of the crime—that funereal tree by the river."

No, I said. No, you've got it all wrong.

"Then tell us where we have it wrong," they said in a rising, accusing tone. "You hated him—you wanted to be valedictorian, you wanted to be the head of the school, you wanted everyone to look at you and see the face of Devon—not him, not him. And if it wasn't him, it would be you. You hated him for that."

No, I did, but I don't, I protested. You've made it far too simple.

"Well, if you didn't hate him, then you love him. And we all know you aren't capable of that, Gene Forrester."

I'm dead. That boy you are describing is dead.

"Then you have no right to be here. Because if Gene Forrester doesn't hate Phineas, then there is no Gene Forrester. Who are you, standing there in your white sheep's skin?"

I had no answer for that. Everything had taken on a sudden dreamlike quality. I felt that if I closed my eyes, I would wake up in another world, in a bed that was soft, looking at a face that belonged beside mine.

Brinker's voice stood alone now. "Here's what you're going to do, Forrester. You're going to pick up your belt and your trousers. You're going to climb up that tree and tie yourself to it. And then you're going to jump."

What! I said. No, that's crazy. Why would I ever do that?

"The Super Suicide Society," he explained. "I thought that was what Finny was calling it. You'll jump; it's a must, unless you're too craven."

I swallowed dryly. I slung the articles of clothing over my shoulder and hauled myself up the tree. Below, on the deserted riverbank, voices chanted Super Suicide Society Super Suicide Society until the words became meaningless waves crashing over and over upon the rocks whittling slowly away at resolve and turning the whole world into chaos.

I fumbled with the knots; my fingers were trembling, but the pulse of blood ticking in my ears remained strangely steady. At some point, the words had changed so that the chant now was simply suicide suicide suicide suicide, and I could hear Finny's voice the strongest among them all.

I balked. I almost loosened myself and climbed back down, but Brinker shouted with an easy laugh, "It's only a dream, Gene!" and I believed him.

I bent my knees and jumped far out, and the voices stopped, the chanting ceased, my head jerked back, and I woke up.

FIN